Simple Bash Script

sachinh · 05-23-2007, 09:28 PM

Hi,

How can we get a user's home directory for every iteration of "i" in the below script?

Script:-

for i in `cat UserList`
do
HomeDir= {This variable should get the value of the respective User's Home Directory in every iteration of "i" }
echo $HomeDir
done

Hope I'm clear.
Thanx in advance.

sachinh · 05-23-2007, 09:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sachinh

Hi,

How can we get a user's home directory for every iteration of "i" in the below script?

Script:-

for i in `cat UserList`
do
HomeDir= {This variable should get the value of the respective User's Home Directory in every iteration of "i" }
echo $HomeDir
done

Hope I'm clear.
Thanx in advance.

Can it be done using Environment Variable $HOME ...But how ??

frob23 · 05-23-2007, 09:44 PM

You would want to parse /etc/passwd but this seems like a really inefficient way to do it. Still:

Code:

for i in `cat UserList`
do
    grep "$i" /etc/passwd | awk -F: '{print $6}'
done

frob23 · 05-23-2007, 09:47 PM

Note: this really depends on what you are trying to do and why. The above would be more helpful if it included the username with each homedir... or whatever.

And the entire thing can be reduced to one awk-command if you are looking for all users (even all between a range of user IDs).

The benefit of using one awk command is that the file is read once (not once per name like above) and you spawn less resources to get the job done.

sachinh · 05-23-2007, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frob23

You would want to parse /etc/passwd but this seems like a really inefficient way to do it. Still:

Code:

for i in `cat UserList`
do
    grep "$i" /etc/passwd | awk -F: '{print $6}'
done

Thanks for the reply . And yes I'm afraid even I think thats a long way approach , as there is ready variable available on Unix thats $HOME..... can we use it in any way in above script??

frob23 · 05-23-2007, 09:54 PM

No we can't because it is only available to the user when they are logged in. And we are not logging in as each user (which would waste even more system resources).